


Make This Place Your Home

by kitlee625, Sarahastro



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitlee625/pseuds/kitlee625, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahastro/pseuds/Sarahastro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil, Melinda, and Melinda’s mom over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make This Place Your Home

**Author's Note:**

> After the bombshell that May was once married, we started wondering who her husband was. We don’t really think that Coulson was her husband, but we could not stop giggling at the idea of Coulson having to deal with May’s mother, so we wrote this story. The first couple are cute, but after that they get pretty angsty.
> 
> The title comes from the song "Home" by Phillip Phillips.

1.

Phil pauses when he hears the knock on the door of Melinda’s dorm room, but Melinda keeps rocking on top of him.

“Ignore it,” she gasps. “They’ll go away.”

He pulls her closer and kisses her. She moans into his mouth. They are both too preoccupied to notice the second knock, or to recognize the sound of someone picking the lock.

“Melinda.”

She immediately rolls off of Phil and pulls the blankets over them. “Mom!”

Phil gives her a look of horror. “Um, hello, Mrs. May.”

“Agent May,” she corrects him. “Don’t look so horrified. I assumed my daughter wasn’t still a virgin.” She turns to Melinda. “Who is this? Another cadet? He’s a little young, isn’t he?”

“What are you doing here, Mom?”

“I had a meeting with Director Carter, and I wanted to see how you were doing.” She sniffs. “I can see that you’re learning a lot at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. It isn’t too late to apply to West Point. I have connections there.”

Melinda rolls her eyes. “That’s not necessary.”

Agent May looks disapprovingly at her daughter and Phil. “I came all this way to see you, and you aren’t even going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Phil Coulson. I’m a second-year cadet.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen, ma’am.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. must be desperate for recruits to be taking teenagers.”

“I was the same age as Melinda when I started.”

Agent May stares at Phil. “My daughter has had extensive training in hand-to-hand combat, surveillance techniques, and languages. I had hoped that she would get proper training at West Point or even in college before joining the Agency, but Peggy lured her away.”

Phil glances at Melinda. Everyone has been wondering how she got into S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy so young, but so far she has not given a straight answer. “So you’re with S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

Agent May says to Melinda, “He doesn’t even know about the other intelligence agencies.”

“She’s with the CIA,” Melinda says.

“You’re not even going to offer me a cup of tea. After I came all this way,” Agent May says.

“Of course, Mom. If you give me a minute to get dressed, we can go to the mess.”

“I’m not drinking tea in the mess. We’ll go to the Agents’ Dining Room.”

That means that she will need to wear her dress uniform. She hopes she has a clean one. “Yes, Mom.”

Her mother turns to leave and then pauses. “Bring your friend, too.”

 

2.

When Phil and Melinda get back to the apartment, her mother is already there waiting for them. Neither of them bother asking how she got into the locked apartment. Phil gives her a nervous smile and says, “Hello, Agent May.”

“Phillip.” She looks at him disapprovingly, then turns to her daughter. “You couldn’t bother telling me in person that you got married? Instead I have to hear on my answering machine that my only daughter got married.”

“It was sudden,” Melinda says.

“Obviously. I thought you two had broken up again.” She eyes her daughter. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“No, Mom.”

“Then why did you get married so suddenly?”

“We’re in love.”

Her mother rolls her eyes. “I raised you to be more practical than that, Melinda. Love is a liability in our line of work.”

Phil glances at Melinda who has the same serene smile on her face. “Even so. Phil is my husband now.”

 

3\. 

Phil had been hoping to spend a quiet weekend with Melinda, but when she hears that they are both going to be in town, Melinda’s mother insists that they come over for dinner.

They have barely sat down, when she asks, “How much longer am I going to have to wait for you to have my grandchild?”

Phil chokes on his wine, and Melinda pats him on the back. “Excuse me?” she asks.

“Well I’m not getting any younger.”

“Mom, Phil and I are very busy with work. We haven’t talked about having children.”

“But you are someday, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. But now isn’t the right time.” Melinda looks at Phil and notices that he looks very uncomfortable. Her mother notices too and frowns.

“Don’t wait too long. I don’t want to be old when I’m teaching my grandchild how to fight.”

Later on the drive home, Phil asks, “Why does your mother want us to have children? I thought she said that love was a liability for spies.”

Melinda shrugs. “I guess she’s gotten used to you.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea for us to have a child?”

She looks surprised. “Yes. I always thought we would once things settled down.”

“We’re both S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Things are never going to settle down enough for us to raise a child. Who would take care of him when we’re on ops?”

“My mother. She spends most of her time at Langley now.”

“Your mother?”

“The child would be very safe,” Melinda says defensively.

“I don’t like the idea of raising a child surrounded by spies. He would always be in danger.”

“That’s how my mother raised me, and I was fine.” She looks at him carefully. “You really don’t want to have children, do you?”

“It’s not that I don’t want them,” Phil says, “but I lost my father when I was only nine. It doesn’t seem fair to have a child when our lives are constantly in danger.”

Melinda looks disappointed. “I always thought that we would have a child together someday. My mother raised me by herself, and she was with the Agency my entire life. Our child would have both of us.”

Not for the first time he wonders about her father. Neither of the Mays ever mention him, and he is not sure that Melinda even knows who he is. Phil has always suspected that he is another spy. Whatever the reason, both of their fathers are ghosts - his a ghost to be mourned, hers one to be ignored. He does not want to be the same to his child. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

 

4\. 

When he gets back from Los Angeles the first thing he notices is that the apartment is dark. At first he assumes that Melinda must be in bed already, but to his surprise the place is empty. In the six months since Bahrain, she has barely left their bed let alone the apartment, and his first thought is that she must have been taken. Perhaps Fury has gone through with his threats to lock her up in the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatric ward. However, when he calls Fury, he has no idea where Melinda is.

Phil paces around the apartment for a few minutes. Then he grits his teeth. If she is not at work, there is only one person who might know where she is.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Agent May. This is Phil. I was calling to see if you know where Melinda is.”

“She’s here.”

“She is? Is she okay?”

“How do you think she is? You left her alone for almost a week.”

“I had to go out of town on a mission. Melinda understood that. I left plenty of food for her.”

Phil can picture the disapproving look on her face. “After what she went through in Bahrain, how could you go out of town and leave her alone?”

Phil knows that he should not yell at Melinda’s mother, but he cannot help it. The frustration at not being able to help her has been building inside him for months. “I don’t know what she went through in Bahrain. She won’t tell me. I’ve tried everything I can think of to help her.”

His mother-in-law’s voice is cold. “She says that she does not want to see you anymore. Pack up her things and bring them to my house. She’ll be staying with me until she gets back on her feet.”

Phil is stunned. “I need to talk to Melinda.”

On the other end of line he hears murmured voices, and then Melinda picks up. “Phil.”

“Melinda. What’s going on?”

“It’s over, Phil.”

“What do you mean, it’s over?” He can hear the desperation creep into his voice. He swallows hard and tries to stay calm. “I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m back now. I’ll come over and pick you up from your mother’s house.”

She does not sound angry, merely sad. “This isn’t about your trip. What we have isn’t working anymore. It hasn’t been working for a long time. We both need to move on.”

“Melinda, please. Come home so we can talk about this.”

“I can’t.” She hangs up.

 

5.

She is not surprised to see her mother outside her door the night of the Battle of New York. There have been rumors for years that the CIA has bugs at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, and Melinda would not be surprised if her mother had arranged for them to be placed when she began working there. For once she is not annoyed by her mother keeping tabs on her.

“Hello, Mom.”

“I heard about Phil.” Her mother raises a bottle of single malt Scotch.

Melinda steps aside and goes to the kitchen for two glasses. When she goes back to the living room, her mother opens the bottle and pours them each a glass. They drink the first one in silence.

“He was a good agent,” her mother says as she pours them each another.

“Yes. He was very brave, but foolish.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive. He did what he thought he had to do for the greater good.”

“I always thought you didn’t think much of him,” Melinda says.

“He was a good agent. Not a very good husband. He never gave you any children. He put his job at S.H.I.E.L.D. first, but then so did you.”

“That was a long time ago, Mom. He was seeing someone else when he died. A cellist. He met her on a mission.”

Her mother snorts but keeps any other comments to herself, for which Melinda is grateful.

They share another drink in silence. It reminds her of when she stayed with her mother after Bahrain. She had left Phil because she could not handle his worrying any more. He alternated between avoiding her and hovering over her, forcing her to go about a daily routine as if regular meals and showers would fix her. When she went to her mother’s house, her mother let her lie in bed for two days before calling her into the kitchen. They had shared most of a bottle of Scotch in silence, and at the end her mother had told her that it was time to move on.

Melinda realizes that the same is true tonight. Phil is gone, and nothing is going to bring him back. This is part of the job, the life that they had both chosen. The only thing she can do now is to move forward and try to honor his memory. The next day she signs up for a refresher course in advanced flight. She is not sure when she will be able to get back in the field, but when she is, she wants to be ready.


End file.
